Mayor makes do with 2 deputies

Heather Knight, Rachel Gordon

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, December 10, 2009

The staff changes just keep coming out of Room 200. The latest? Mayor Gavin Newsomhas hired Yashar Hedayat, who worked on his defunct gubernatorial campaign, as his new deputy chief of staff in charge of operations.

Steve Kawa, the mayor's chief of staff, said the mayor is cognizant of setting a good example as City Hall copes with a $45 million midyear budget deficit and an eye-popping $522 million deficit for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

Thus, Hedayat will make $131,000 a year, down from the normal $145,000 for the position. Kawa added that Newsom will stick to just two deputy chiefs of staff - Hedayat and Christine DeBerry, deputy chief of staff for policy - which is down from a high of five deputies.

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"I'm not going to get into direct personnel issues, but there have been changes that have been made and there will be additional changes in the future both with people leaving and putting a team together so we can deliver on the mayor's ambitious and aggressive agenda," Kawa said.

Mike Farrah, head of the 10-member Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services, said he couldn't discuss whether anybody would be hired to fill the positions vacated by Pedroza and Randolph. The former worked with constituents in Districts 9 and 10, while the latter helped those in 7 and 8.

"These were two of the mayor's best employees, and they're exploring new opportunities inside and outside government," Farrah said.

- Heather Knight

A compromise: A day after failing to secure a veto-proof majority vote at the Board of Supervisors to extend eviction protections in San Francisco, tenant advocates are contemplating a pared-back version of their proposal that could gain them the one extra vote they need.

As now drafted, the legislation would bring rental units built after 1979 - when the city's rent-control law was approved - under the same rules as the rentals built earlier. In those older units, landlords can evict tenants only for "just cause" - for example, not paying rent.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty, the swing vote, said he would have voted "yes" if the protections for tenants living in post-1979 rentals only would kick in when an eviction was driven by foreclosure.

"I would be totally supportive of that," Dufty said Wednesday.

Janan New, who heads the landlord-backed San Francisco Apartment Association, said she, too, could live with the amended legislation as long as it put the burden on the banks to deal with the evictions.

Supervisor John Avalos, chief sponsor of the legislation, said he would consider supporting the amendment as a first step to getting eviction protections in place. - Rachel Gordon

Good housing news: It seems to be all doom and gloom in housing news these days, but there was a respite Wednesday morning as city officials and developers gathered to dedicate a new apartment complex at 10th and Mission streets.

The Mercy Housing project contains 136 units of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. Ninety-two of them will be affordable to those earning 50 percent of San Francisco's area median income, about $96,800 for a family of four, according to city officials. The other 44 units will go to formerly homeless families making between 15 and 25 percent of area median income.

The complex also includes a 5,400-square-foot youth and family center, a primary health clinic, and space on the ground floor for shops.

"This is spectacular - a true campus, not just a housing site," Mayor Gavin Newsom told a crowd huddled outside under heat lamps.

- Heather Knight

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